4 Introduction and summary The personal retirement-savings plans that most Americans use, such as 401(k)s and Individual Retirement Accounts, or IRAs, are unnecessarily costly and needlessly risky. But instituting another kind of retirement plan that combines the best elements of both defined-contribution and defined-benefit plans such as the Center for American Progress s proposed Secure, Accessible, Flexible, and Efficient, or SAFE, Retirement Plan, 1 or the related USA Retirement Funds proposal from Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) 2 could provide a more secure retirement at a far lower cost, according to a new analysis by the Center for American Progress. These two proposals, also known as collective defined-contribution plans, improve upon the 401(k) model in a number of ways. As described in greater detail in a fall 2012 report, titled Making Saving for Retirement Easier, Cheaper, and More Secure, 3 CAP s SAFE Retirement Plan combines elements of a traditional pension including regular lifetime payments in retirement, professional management, and pooled investing with elements of a 401(k), such as predictable costs for employers and portability for workers. (see text box) Our actuarial analysis finds that CAP s SAFE Retirement Plan significantly outperforms both 401(k)s and IRAs on cost and risk measures. The results of our study are striking: The SAFE Plan costs only half as much for workers. A worker with a SAFE Plan would have to contribute only half as much of their paycheck as a worker saving in a typical 401(k) plan to have the same likelihood of maintaining their standard of living upon retirement. The SAFE Plan reduces risk dramatically. A worker with a SAFE Plan is nearly 2.3 times as likely to maintain their standard of living in retirement as a worker with a typical 401(k) account making identical contributions. 1 Center for American Progress American Retirement Savings Could Be Much Better

5 The makings of a SAFE Retirement Plan Some of the plan s key features include the following: Plans would be organized as nonprofit organizations run by independent boards with significant participant representation. Their sole objective would be to maximize long-term benefits for all participants. Plans would be available to all workers regardless of whether their employer offered retirement benefits prior to the introduction of the plan. Investments would be professionally managed. SAFE Retirement Plan boards would be able to contract with professional investment-management providers. Benefits would be portable when workers change jobs and would be payable for life. Each worker would select a plan, and his or her employer would only need to facilitate enrollment and any required payroll deductions. If employers make contributions, employer costs would be fixed as a percentage of pay, and employers would not be faced with administrative or fiduciary obligations. The risks of the SAFE Retirement Plan would be spread among workers and retirees rather than borne solely by employers, as they are in a traditional pension plan, or individual workers, as they are in a 401(k). While payout levels in the SAFE Retirement Plan would not be guaranteed, the plan would be far less risky for workers and retirees than a 401(k), with a higher likelihood of achieving target benefit levels. The plan would also be much more efficient than a 401(k) in achieving required investment returns at a low cost. This hybrid model would not require employers to take on the risk of guaranteeing returns as they must with traditional pensions, nor would it impose any additional costs or risk on government. The results of our study are relevant not only to federal policymakers, but also to state leaders considering new types of retirement plans for workers in their states. 4 The SAFE Retirement Plan improves retirement-saving outcomes through two primary paths: 1. Eliminating the glaring inefficiencies common in 401(k)s and IRAs, including their high fees and the behavioral mistakes that workers saving in individual accounts commonly make, such as failing to diversify investments. 2. Mitigating risk to individual participants. In the typical 401(k) and IRA, individuals are left to fend for themselves and are fully exposed to many risks during their working years and in retirement. In the SAFE Plan, risks are shared among workers and among retirees, providing a kind of insurance that reduces risks for all participants. 2 Center for American Progress American Retirement Savings Could Be Much Better

6 While some individuals have been able to save significant sums with 401(k)s and IRAs, the weaknesses of these plans have been apparent for some time. These problems are only being fully recognized now, however, as the first generation to primarily depend on defined-contribution plans such as the 401(k) as opposed to traditional pensions starts to retire. Less than half of all workers have a retirement plan at work, 5 and even the typical near-retirement worker with a 401(k) plan only has enough money in their retirement accounts to provide a monthly check of $575 6 nowhere near enough money for a secure retirement. These retirees are still subject to great risks: The vast majority of retirees must hope that they don t outlive their small pool of money, and many retirees worry that inflation will erode their purchasing power. Social Security, of course, provides an essential baseline of income for retirees and must be strengthened so it can continue to do so for generations to come, as the Center for American Progress has already proposed. 7 But Social Security was never intended to be people s only source of income in retirement. To maintain their standard of living, retired Americans also depend on workplace retirement plans such as 401(k)s, pensions, and, to a smaller degree, private savings. The cost and risk advantages of the SAFE Retirement Plan are discussed at length below. We first describe the various challenges inherent in saving for retirement and explain why most 401(k)s and IRAs are not as well suited to handle these challenges as a SAFE Retirement Plan. We then describe in more detail how a SAFE Retirement Plan would operate. Finally, using two models based on historical and projected data, we demonstrate how a SAFE Plan performs under many different economic conditions and show that the typical worker would fare much better in a SAFE Plan than in even the best 401(k) plan. The bottom line is that the current 401(k) system is so inefficient and risky that there are many ways to dramatically improve outcomes for participants that would lower both the costs and risks that workers and retirees face. The SAFE Retirement Plan incorporates a number of these improvements and offers a substantially better way to save for retirement. 3 Center for American Progress American Retirement Savings Could Be Much Better

7 The challenges of saving for retirement Planning for retirement is a multidecade process that requires saving and investing throughout a worker s career and then withdrawing funds during a retirement period that can last many years. Risks include uneven investment returns, inflation, and an unknown life expectancy, while costs include fees paid to manage assets or purchase particular products. Unfortunately, the typical 401(k) and IRA is not well designed enough to manage the costs and risks of retirement. A better retirement-plan design such as the SAFE Retirement Plan can significantly reduce these costs and risks. When economists and policy experts talk about these issues, they typically describe them as specific kinds of risks and inefficiencies that can be minimized, hedged, or borne. But a more intuitive way to look at these problems is to see how a typical saver would respond to hypothetical questions about their retirement savings if they were a member of a SAFE Retirement Plan, compared to how they would answer if they were participating in a 401(k) plan or IRA. This section illustrates that a member of a SAFE Retirement Plan would be much more comfortable with their answers to the following questions. How much should I save? And when should I start? The current 401(k) system leaves decisions about contributions how much and starting when to the individual saver. Workers are given the opportunity to contribute as much or as little to their 401(k) plans without much guidance as to the appropriate level. Furthermore, workers have to decide on their own when to start saving, which can lead to procrastination and a higher risk of not saving enough for retirement. 4 Center for American Progress American Retirement Savings Could Be Much Better

8 Aspects of the SAFE Retirement Plan can help alleviate these problems. First, all employees would have a set portion of their paycheck automatically deducted and contributed to the SAFE Retirement Plan they have chosen. Employees would, however, have the opportunity to voluntarily stop contributions by opting out of the payments, although when any worker begins a new job, he or she would by default be re-enrolled. Such auto-enrollment policies have been found to be very successful in spurring saving for retirement. 8 One careful study of Danish savers found that approximately 85 percent of savers are passive, and their retirement savings won t increase in response to tax subsidies but will increase when automatic contributions are set for them. 9 Second, the contribution level could also be increased over time using a policy known as auto-escalation. If a worker starts out contributing 3 percent of his or her pay, for example, the policy would increase his or her contributions over time as the worker s salary increases. Previous research has found this method to be an effective way to increase savings rates. A study by economists Richard H. Thaler and Shlomo Benartzi found that savings rates of workers who joined such an auto-escalation plan increased their level of savings from 3.5 percent to 13.6 percent over 40 months a growth rate that many plans would envy. 10 While autoenrollment and auto-escalation are becoming more common, as of 2011 only 56 percent of employers who offer a 401(k) plan use auto-enrollment and 51 percent use auto-escalation. 11 What if I change jobs? Because our current 401(k) system is employer based, workers face the problem of having their savings interrupted when they switch jobs. A worker contributing to a 401(k) plan at one job has to start contributing to a new plan if one is offered when he or she begins a new job. The worker then has to choose what to do with the funds remaining in the old 401(k) account a process that can be complicated and results in many workers losing significant portions of their savings as they either delay moving their money into a new investment fund or cash out their savings early. 12 These problems are a significant source of 401(k) leakage and undermine workers ability to accumulate sufficient savings for their retirement. 5 Center for American Progress American Retirement Savings Could Be Much Better

9 Indeed, it is estimated that about 4 in 10 workers choose to cash out some portion of their 401(k) balance when they change jobs rather than go through the complex process of rolling over their funds into new accounts. 13 These cash outs represent permanent losses to the retirement system and may be very difficult for workers to recoup later in life. Workers who cash out their 401(k) plans and delay contributing to their new plan for five years may see a 10 percentage-point decrease in their likelihood of replacing most of their income in retirement, according to a study by the Defined Contribution Institutional Investment Association. 14 Savers in a SAFE Retirement Plan would avoid these pitfalls since the system is not employer based. A worker s contributions will flow to the fund of his or her choice regardless of where he or she works. If a worker leaves his or her current job and starts a new one, retirement contributions flow to the same fund and the only change is that there is a different employer facilitating the flow of money. What is the right investment strategy? Savers greatest concern is that they won t have enough money at retirement. Part of this calculation has to do with how much either the employer or the saver contributes to the retirement fund. However, the returns earned on those contributions are a critical determinant. Economists refer to this as investment risk, or the risk that investments won t have earned enough in the years leading up to retirement. 15 SAFE Retirement Plans would have lower investment risks and higher rates of investment return than traditional 401(k) plans. One of the main ways that a SAFE Retirement Plan would help workers save more efficiently is by minimizing the costs of investing. Most 401(k) plans have relatively high costs, which make saving for retirement a much more expensive exercise than it should be. The average 401(k) plan has fees that are approximately 1 percent of assets managed, 16 while large pooled retirement-investment funds such as corporate and public-sector pensions have fees that are significantly lower. 17 One study by researchers at the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College found that public-sector pensions had an average management fee of 0.25 percent of assets managed, compared to average costs of more than 1 percent for 401(k) plans with actively traded funds Center for American Progress American Retirement Savings Could Be Much Better

10 A major reason fees are so high in most 401(k)s is because the high fixed costs of managing a fund are generally borne by a small number of savers. Research attests to this fact and has found that plan size is a significant determinant of a plan s fees as a percentage of assets. 19 Costs are also high because savers in 401(k) plans often invest in actively managed mutual funds, which have much higher fees than more passive investments such as index funds. 20 All told, studies indicate that high fees in 401(k)s can eat away as much as one-quarter to one-third of returns on retirement assets. 21 Unfortunately, fees for Individual Retirement Accounts are even higher than 401(k) plans. 22 SAFE Retirement Plans would have comparatively low fees because the large size of the fund would spread out the fixed costs of investing and administering the plan. Participants accounts would be pooled together to hire investment managers, who would then work to further keep costs down by pursuing lower-cost investment strategies that invest heavily in index funds. In addition to low fees, savers will also benefit from the SAFE Plan s professional money management. 401(k) plans require that the individual saver manage his or her investments. The average investor has his or her own job and most likely is not a finance expert familiar with investment strategies. In fact, individual investors frequently fall prey to a variety of pitfalls that reduce investment returns. One common investment mistake made by individuals is the failure to properly allocate assets. Over the course of a lifetime, an investor should transition his or her allocation from mostly equities early in life to mostly bonds later in life, as he or she moves from a riskier portfolio to a more conservative one. Many individual investors, however, fail to do this. According to data from TIAA-CREF, many investors simply invest half their money in bonds and half their funds in equities, and this tendency is not restricted to low-information investors. 23 Indeed, even Nobel Prize-winning economist Harry Markowitz has admitted that he did not invest based on modern portfolio theory the theory that helped him win the Nobel Prize but rather split his contributions between bonds and equities. 24 Markowitz has acknowledged that his investment strategy wasn t optimal, noting that In retrospect, it would have been better to have been more in stocks when I was younger Center for American Progress American Retirement Savings Could Be Much Better

11 Other common misallocations include investing either entirely in equities or bonds or overinvesting in local companies and funds, the latter being a trend economists refer to as home bias. For example, data from the Vanguard Group show that nearly 20 percent of savers in their plans had 100 percent of their assets in either all equities or all bonds. 26 These kinds of mistakes can leave investors vulnerable to market fluctuations due to their lack of asset diversification. 27 Savers also often make the mistake of taking out funds in response to market declines and thus missing out on higher returns when the market rebounds, as it tends to do over the long term. One study by researchers Thomas Bridges and Frank P. Stafford at the University of Michigan found that individuals made significant withdrawals from their retirement accounts after the dot-com stock-market bubble popped in 2001 and after the financial crisis of If individuals do not pull their money out of the market entirely, they often shift their investments to less-risky bonds, taking the full hit of the market decline but missing out on the future recovery. Many investors will then only put their money back in stocks when the market is strong, perpetuating a perverse investment cycle that significantly undermines individuals ability to grow their nest egg over time. 29 For these reasons and many others, professional money managers who are more patient with their investments, avoid many common investment biases and are able to diversify fund investments among a multitude of asset classes that include some not available to individual investors have higher average returns than individual investors. 30 While such money managers rarely beat market averages, 31 their goal in managing SAFE Retirement Plan investments would be to meet the average returns of the various markets they invest in, something that individual investors fail to do but professional managers commonly achieve. In short, professional money managers would ensure that SAFE Retirement Plan investments are properly diversified and invested for the long term, allowing them to achieve higher returns than workers in a typical 401(k). Based on previous research, this could amount to an annual average increase in returns of approximately 1 percentage point. 32 The final reason why SAFE Retirement Plans would better enable the average saver to reach their investment goals when compared to savers with traditional 401(k)s is that the accounts of both older and younger workers are pooled together, enabling fund managers to maintain a balanced portfolio that achieves smoother and potentially higher returns over time. This is because individuals with a 401(k) cannot always maintain an ideal asset mix since they must become more conservative with their investments as they age because they have less time 8 Center for American Progress American Retirement Savings Could Be Much Better

12 to recover from any possible losses, which can result in lower returns. This benefit of the SAFE Plan, called intergenerational risk sharing, ensures that workers savings are optimally invested at all times, providing returns that are both more stable over time and according to research by economist Christian Gollier of the Toulouse School of Economics potentially up to 0.53 percentage points higher than those achieved in the average defined-contribution plan. 33 What about the risk of losses? Another major concern for savers in defined-contribution plans is that they may save enough for retirement, only to see their investments suddenly drop in value as a recession hits the economy just as they are about to retire. In a traditional 401(k) plan, the saver takes on the entirety of this timing risk. If the worker is about to retire when the market crashes, he or she must drastically increase his or her contributions or continue to work past his or her expected retirement date to make up for the difference and avoid having a lower-than-planned standard of living. A SAFE Retirement Plan would reduce the risk of market losses by smoothing out the investment returns from years when returns are particularly high or low. This would be done by creating what is known as a collar, which would function as follows: In most years, participant accounts would be credited with market returns, but in particularly good or bad years, the full market return would not immediately be credited. Rather, years of higher returns would be saved away and returned over time in weaker-performing years. The idea of using a collar to smooth returns in pension funds originated in a paper co-authored by Harvard economist Martin Feldstein. 34 Through the use of collars, the SAFE Retirement Plan can spread out risk among generations, helping to ensure that no individual is fully exposed to extreme market losses. 35 Take the real-world example of the time span between December 2007 and June 2009, the duration of the Great Recession. Workers who were near retirement ages 55 to 64 and who had been investing in a 401(k) for 20 to 29 years saw their account balances decrease an average of 17.4 percent. 36 By early 2013 the stock market had recovered all of the losses suffered during the Great Recession, but in order for a person s 401(k) to benefit fully from this recovery, the person needed to be invested in the market during this period and not taking any withdrawals to fund his or her retirement. Few retirement-age individuals on their own have assets to tide them over until the market recovers, but plans such as the SAFE 9 Center for American Progress American Retirement Savings Could Be Much Better

13 Plan do have the time and the financial strategy to provide more stable investment returns. Indeed, estimates from 2012 suggested that the benefits provided by collective defined-contribution plans in the Netherlands which are similar to the SAFE Plan may only need to be reduced by approximately 2 percent to 3 percent on average because of investment losses suffered during the Great Recession, representing far less of a hit than that felt by individuals with 401(k)s. 37 A more detailed explanation of the how the SAFE Retirement Plan s collar would function and an example of exactly how it would have protected individuals account balances from market fluctuations over the past 25 years can be found in the appendix. Will I outlive my savings? No matter how much workers save, there is still a chance they can outlive their assets. The risk that a worker might outlive their savings is known as longevity risk. This risk can be hedged by purchasing an annuity. The saver buys an annuity that guarantees a certain amount of payments over the years depending upon the amount of savings in their individual account. But only one in five 401(k) plans offers an annuity option. 38 For those without the ability to do so in a 401(k), purchasing an annuity in the individual market is more expensive than in the group market, as all of the fees for managing the annuity are borne by the individual. 39 Many workers with a 401(k) attempt to manage longevity risk by only withdrawing a small amount of their assets each year, but this process doesn t always work. Indeed, research on the topic has found withdrawal methods such as these, including the 4 percent rule where a retiree annually spends down 4 percent of his initial wealth to be very inefficient. 40 It is virtually impossible to support a constant spending plan when market returns on the underlying investments can vary significantly from year to year. As a result, savers may end up significantly over-withdrawing from their retirement accounts and prematurely burning through their savings if their actual investment returns fall below the assumptions they used when initially calculating the size of their fixed annual withdrawal. Further, such withdrawal methods can also be inefficient because savers who wish to be certain they will never run out of money but don t know how long their retirement will last must always keep extra money in savings and never completely draw down their accounts. 10 Center for American Progress American Retirement Savings Could Be Much Better

14 Even if a worker purchases an annuity, he or she still faces several risks. One risk is that interest rates will be very low when the worker is ready to retire and to purchase an annuity. Since the price of an annuity goes up when interest rates go down, the cost of purchasing an annuity would be elevated in a period of low interest rates. When interest rates are low, more money is required to generate the same amount of payouts in retirement. 41 A SAFE Retirement Plan would minimize these risks by providing an annuitized stream of payments that increases in value over time and cannot be outlived. The SAFE Retirement Plan does this by providing payments out of an annuity fund for retirees that is conservatively invested primarily in bonds with some stocks to enable payments to keep up with inflation over time and by spreading out the impact of years of very high and very low returns in a similar manner as is done during the accumulation phase. How do I deal with inflation? Once a worker retires, he or she faces the risk that steady price increases will erode the value of his or her savings. Under the current 401(k) system, the individual is not protected against the risk of inflation eroding his or her buying power. Even if a worker purchases an annuity, the stream of payments is most likely not hedged against inflation. The SAFE Retirement Plan would deal with the problem of inflation by providing cost-of-living adjustments to retirees receiving payments from the annuity fund. These payments would help protect against the risk of inflation. The retirees would also receive bonus checks from the annuity fund when the returns are particularly good and the fund is deemed to be sufficiently healthy. 11 Center for American Progress American Retirement Savings Could Be Much Better

15 The overall benefits of the SAFE Retirement Plan As a number of studies have found, plans such as the SAFE Retirement Plan are more efficient and less risky than defined-contribution, or DC, plans such as 401(k)s. Plans that combine elements of defined-benefit pensions with definedcontribution plans are often called collective defined-contribution, or CDC, plans, and though their exact features may differ slightly, researchers have found that this basic model is very effective. A study commissioned by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development found that one such stylized CDC plan significantly reduced the chances that a worker didn t have enough funds to maintain his or her standard of living in retirement compared to an individual in a defined-contribution plan such as a 401(k). 42 Similarly, a study by the British government found that a CDC plan would impose less risk on an individual than a 401(k)-style plan by making the worker less dependent on whether the individual happens to retire in a downturn or in a boom. 43 Academics have come to similar and more specific conclusions. Dutch researchers Eduard H.M. Ponds and Bart van Riel estimate that overall investment returns in CDC funds will average about 2 percentage points higher than in a DC plan. 44 They also find that individual DC plans have a high downside risk, meaning that individuals in a DC plan are much more likely to have a lower standard of living in retirement than are savers in a CDC plan. In perhaps the most comprehensive study of the collective defined-contribution concept, Judith Verheijden, a Dutch retirement researcher, estimated contribution levels necessary to provide a high level of certainty of having adequate income in retirement under several different kinds of retirement plans. Drawing on previous analyses of defined-contribution plans comparability to defined-benefit plans, she found that in order to have an equally secure retirement, a worker would need to contribute between 70 percent and 74 percent more in a 401(k)-style plan than they would in a collective defined-contribution plan. 45 For example, a worker would have to contribute 17 percent of their pay to an individual DC plan to get the same security as contributing 10 percent of their pay to a CDC fund. 12 Center for American Progress American Retirement Savings Could Be Much Better

16 While these studies describe many of the general advantages of the CDC model over the individual defined-contribution system, they do not directly compare a CDC-style system to the current DC system in the United States. For example, the Verheijden study models a best-case individual DC plan type. Unfortunately, the reality of our current system is far from that ideal due to high fees, lack of coverage, and preretirement leakage of savings. Further, the studies are generally based on retirement plans from other countries that are analogous but not identical to the types of plans in the United States. Most importantly, these studies do not model our specific proposal for a SAFE Retirement Plan. With that in mind, the next section of this paper lays out the specifics of our proposal for a SAFE Retirement Plan and then uses economic modeling to show the cost and risk reductions available from the new retirement plan. This modeling enables us to answer questions such as: What level of contribution is required in a SAFE Retirement Plan compared to a 401(k) to get to an adequate level of retirement income with a reasonably high probability? And how do the downside risks compare? 13 Center for American Progress American Retirement Savings Could Be Much Better

17 The mechanics of the SAFE Retirement Plan Above we offered a general description of the cost and risk advantages of a SAFE Retirement Plan model. Now we will describe specific elements of the plan and modeling choices so that we can provide a detailed analysis of the plan s performance and then compare it to other plans. The specific design parameters we use for the SAFE Plan have been tested, and we have confirmed that they can provide a sustainable platform for efficient retirement saving. Other design parameters within the same framework would also be workable, however, so the reader should consider our SAFE Plan design as one example within a group of viable options. In outlining the specific features of the SAFE Retirement Plan, it is worth emphasizing that the plan reduces the costs of saving for retirement and lowers the risks, but it does not eliminate either entirely. This is because retirement planning involves some inherent tradeoffs between costs and risks. To understand why this is so, consider one way to reduce retirement risks: by investing solely in government-backed Treasury bonds that will pay out guaranteed interest for a number of years. The problem is that this practice is prohibitively expensive for most people saving for retirement in this manner would require the typical worker to save an estimated 23 percent of his or her salary every year for 37 years. 46 Reducing costs to more manageable levels requires taking some risks such as investing a portion of one s savings in the stock market. Over long periods of time, this should produce higher returns than Treasury bonds, though such investments can also fail to produce expected returns and can even lose value. Managing other risks such as inflation risk involves similar tradeoffs. As a result, the SAFE Retirement Plan necessarily takes some risks but seeks to keep both cost and risk to manageable levels. 14 Center for American Progress American Retirement Savings Could Be Much Better

18 The accumulation phase In our model, 65 percent of funds in the main accumulation fund would be invested in stocks, and 35 percent would be invested in bonds. Of course, SAFE Retirement Plans could be less or more aggressive in their investing by allocating less or more to equities. In our modeling, however, this allocation provided stable and manageable results and provided a reasonable tradeoff between cost and risk. While the funds would be collectively managed, each member of the fund would have a notional account. The member wouldn t have any control over the contents of the fund, as is the case in a 401(k). The account would exist solely to keep track of each member s savings contributions and investment credits, which are simply the rate of return credited to each member of the plan that year. As mentioned above, the fund would use a financial instrument called a collar to distribute investment returns through a base investment credit each year. In addition, bonus investment credits will often be added to the base credit if the plan has accumulated surplus assets, which is expected. In our SAFE Retirement Plan model, the collar we used has a floor of a zero percent rate of return and a ceiling of an 8 percent rate of return. 47 If the market rate of return is between zero percent and 8 percent, members of the fund are credited with that rate of return. If the market rate of return is below zero percent, however, the fund still credits each account with a zero percent return and uses accumulated funds from a notional reserve fund to cover any losses. If the rate of return is larger than 8 percent, the fund only credits the accounts with an 8 percent investment credit, and the excess returns are used to replenish the reserve fund. Members of the fund may receive investment credits in excess of those distributed by the collar depending upon the health of the overall fund. The fund s health would be evaluated using the current-value ratio the value of all the assets in the fund divided by the total value of all member retirement accounts. When the fund does well and has accumulated sufficient assets in its reserve fund, each account would receive bonus investment credits. The exact schedule that we used to distribute bonus credits in our model plan is provided in the appendix. For example, if the current-value ratio is at least 130 percent, each member of the fund would receive an extra 3 percent investment credit. So in a year with a 6 percent market rate of return, a fund with a current-value ratio of at least 130 percent would give investment credits of 9 percent to all its members. In our model, bonus credits would be dispensed about two-thirds of the time, and the average bonus credit, when payable, is 4 percent. 15 Center for American Progress American Retirement Savings Could Be Much Better

19 On the other hand, if the fund is severely underfunded, it can reduce members account balances, although this happens only rarely in our modeling. More information on such potential reductions is available in the appendix. Note that it takes a number of years for a new SAFE fund to build up the reserve cushion, so bonus payouts in the early years are likely to be lower than after the fund reaches a mature state. All of our results reflect expectations for a fully mature fund. For our baseline modeling, we assume members of the fund would contribute 12 percent of their pay into the collective fund. The 12 percent of pay could be split between an individual employee and an employer. For example, an employee might contribute 9 percent of his or her pay, and his or her employer would pick up the other 3 percent. The 12 percent figure was chosen as an approximation of the standard recommendation of industry professionals, who generally place the required figure at between 10 percent and 15 percent of income, with some placing the minimum recommended contribution at exactly 12 percent. 48 We also provide results for larger and smaller contribution levels, but use 12 percent of pay as a baseline. No auto-escalation feature was included in this model, but its incorporation may merit consideration going forward. The payout phase When a member reaches retirement, funds equal to their accumulated account balance would be transferred to a separate annuity fund, which would pay out annuities to members in retirement. Our model annuity fund would invest 35 percent of its funds in equities and 65 percent in bonds, a more conservative asset mix than the accumulation fund. The fund would seek to provide a 2 percent annual cost-of-living adjustment in its lifetime payments to participants. This fixed adjustment simplifies the annuity pricing at retirement and is designed to cover most of the prospective inflation risk, even before recognition of the bonus checks described below. As with the accumulation fund, the payouts from the annuity fund could change with the health of the fund. If the funded ratio of the annuity fund fell below 90 percent for two out of three years, the cost-of-living adjustment would be suspended. The adjustment wouldn t return until the annuity fund had a funded ratio of at least 100 percent for two out of three years. In our modeling, suspension of cost-ofliving adjustments in any year occurred with a probability of about 14 percent. 16 Center for American Progress American Retirement Savings Could Be Much Better

20 On the upside, bonus checks above the regular benefit can be distributed. In our modeling runs, bonus payments are made whenever the funded ratio for the annuity fund exceeds 110 percent. Under this rule, bonus payments are made in about 67 percent of years and, when they are paid out, average about 27 percent of the regular benefit. Over the typical payout period, the fixed 2 percent cost-of-living adjustment, plus the bonus checks paid, will most often exceed what a full inflation cost-of-living adjustment would have provided. The exact schedule we used to determine when the annuity fund would make bonus payouts can be found in the appendix of this report. To price annuities, we use a nominal interest rate of 5 percent. (Note that our overall model allows interest rates to vary; we make the fixed 5 percent assumption for pricing because it works well and is sustainable, even when market yields from our stochastic model are quite volatile). For example, at this rate a retiree with an account balance of $200,000 at age 67 would receive an initial monthly benefit of $1,160, with scheduled increases of 2 percent each year after retirement. The average bonus check for this retiree would total approximately $290 initially, but would also increase as the regular benefit grows with the cost-of-living adjustment. If the bonus checks become increasingly regular, the board of the fund may permanently increase annuity payments. 17 Center for American Progress American Retirement Savings Could Be Much Better

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This publication has been developed by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA), and its partners. To view this and other EBSA publications, visit the agency s Website

Summary The tax relief permitted on pension lump sums disproportionately benefits the wealthy at taxpayers expense. The result is a regressive system where those with the most generous entitlements also

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